“I assume your familiarity with the word ‘fetish.’ It is spelled two ways and pronounced four; I pronounce it as I was taught at my mother’s knee.”
By way of accentuating the fact that he had had a mother he affected a rudimentary tenderness of tone and expression which in a case of doubtful identity would have assisted in distinguishing him as a pirate of the Spanish Main.
The Reporter asked what fetish worship might have the hardihood to be.
“Fetish worship,” replied the Curmudgeon Philosopher, “is the most primitive of religions. It is the form that belief in the supernatural takes in our lowest stage of intellectual development—the adoration of material objects. A stone or a tree supposed to possess supernatural powers of good or evil, or to have some peculiar sanctity, is a fetish. Idolatry and the worship of living things are not uncommonly confounded with fetish worship, but in reality are another and higher form of religion, belonging to a more advanced culture.”
“You have seen the proposal to transport Plymouth Rock about the country for a show? It is in the morning papers, one of which I had the bad luck to pick up while at breakfast. Hate the morning papers!”
The Timorous Reporter signified his regret.
“I hope it will not be done,” continued the Curmudgeon Philosopher, ignoring the apology. “In the first place, the Rock is devoid of authenticity. It is indubitably a rock, and it is at Plymouth, but its connection with the landing of the Pilgrims was supplied by imagination. That is all right; by imagination we demonstrate our superiority to the novelists. Historians and scientists are credentialed by imagination; through imagination the philosopher attains to a knowledge of the meaning and message of things. Without imagination we should be as the magazine poets that perish.”
With obvious satisfaction in his character of cynic the Curmudgeon Philosopher again mitigated the austerity of his countenance—this time by something that may have been honestly intended as a smile.
“We have seen bands of children taught to march about a cracked bell, throw flowers upon it, sing hymns to it. When it stopped in the several cities that it was carried through on a triumphal car the populace turned out to worship it. It was supplied with a ‘guard of honor.’ Bands played appropriate music before it, and mayors ‘delivered eulogies.’ No popular hero or august sovereign could be accorded a more obsequious homage than this lifeless piece of cracked metal—nay, its progress is more like that of a Grecian god. This was fetishism, pure and undefiled.
“If this new project is carried out the people that worshiped a bell will worship a stone. True, the stone weighs several tons.”